Balanchine just is not my favorite choreographer. Of all the things one could do with The Nutcracker, why butcher the grand pas de deux? Still bugs me. I've never liked how he handled story ballets, anyway. I've always said that when you watch Apollo, you're seeing Fokine, and when you watch Prodigal Son, you're seeing Nijinsky.
The first time I saw Jewels was the Paris Opera Ballet production, filmed for Dance in America some ten or twelve years ago. Back then, a whole lot of companies were doing Balanchine better than Balanchine's company. After all, when you put a Balanchine work on your program, someone from the Balanchine Foundation swoops in to make sure you get it exactly the way Mr. B created it. Get it wrong, and you won't get permission to perform.
So here's Paris Opera Ballet, a stage full of the best dancers in the world, and I can't even look at this thing. The company commissioned Christian Lacroix to do the costumes and the results were less than spectacular. The women's costumes for Rubies were an outright disaster.
But time has driven the memory of that broadcast from my tired old brain, so I went with the resident accompanist to the front and center of the fourth ring to sit through the latest production from New York City Ballet. The costumes were the originals by Karinska. Refurbished, they may well last another fifty years.The sets had the company dancing through jewelry boxes and displays. I especially liked the set for Rubies, which had strands of red against velvety black. I've never understood, though, why they insist on white tights and shoes, unless this is one of Mr. B's carved in stone preferences. For me, it was the white tights that made the Lacroix costumes so hideous. It's not like they have to do a quick change. Black tights might have made the Karinska costumes look a bit less like cheerleader uniforms, though if they really wanted to evoke the Jazz Age, black fishnet tights for the girls would do it.
Emeralds is lovely. Until you get to the pas de deux, where it suddenly turns into Coppelia. Or as I've heard it referred to, the "tick tock" pas. The graceful curves and flow are destroyed by wrists and elbows and jerking, clockwork movements, for no apparent reason. There are other aspects, mostly in Rubies, where a sense of playfulness appears, but as in most of Balanchine's works, it is stifled by the rigidness of his style.
Diamonds is just a honking big Russian classical finale. I remember thinking this was the one setting where Lacroix got his costumes right, because, duh, how many Russian white acts can be looked at for research? In this case, I actually preferred his costumes over Karinska's. While Emeralds had some spacing issues, Diamonds was flawed by timing issues. The dancers weren't getting any help from their conductor for the evening. Yes, it's set to a Tchaikovsky symphony, but no, you cannot conduct the orchestra to play it as if they are in concert. You have to be sensitive to the choreography, or at the very least aware that there are dancers on the stage. You have to be subtle with such an intricate and precise piece. I'm sure the score was marked accordingly. It would behoove the conductor to follow them, and work with the dancers. That is, after all, what a ballet pit orchestra is paid to do.
That being said, I have stuck a few toes in the murky waters of the maestro's works. I have plans to to do a bit more wading, as the season continues. Stay tuned.
The first time I saw Jewels was the Paris Opera Ballet production, filmed for Dance in America some ten or twelve years ago. Back then, a whole lot of companies were doing Balanchine better than Balanchine's company. After all, when you put a Balanchine work on your program, someone from the Balanchine Foundation swoops in to make sure you get it exactly the way Mr. B created it. Get it wrong, and you won't get permission to perform.
So here's Paris Opera Ballet, a stage full of the best dancers in the world, and I can't even look at this thing. The company commissioned Christian Lacroix to do the costumes and the results were less than spectacular. The women's costumes for Rubies were an outright disaster.
But time has driven the memory of that broadcast from my tired old brain, so I went with the resident accompanist to the front and center of the fourth ring to sit through the latest production from New York City Ballet. The costumes were the originals by Karinska. Refurbished, they may well last another fifty years.The sets had the company dancing through jewelry boxes and displays. I especially liked the set for Rubies, which had strands of red against velvety black. I've never understood, though, why they insist on white tights and shoes, unless this is one of Mr. B's carved in stone preferences. For me, it was the white tights that made the Lacroix costumes so hideous. It's not like they have to do a quick change. Black tights might have made the Karinska costumes look a bit less like cheerleader uniforms, though if they really wanted to evoke the Jazz Age, black fishnet tights for the girls would do it.
Emeralds is lovely. Until you get to the pas de deux, where it suddenly turns into Coppelia. Or as I've heard it referred to, the "tick tock" pas. The graceful curves and flow are destroyed by wrists and elbows and jerking, clockwork movements, for no apparent reason. There are other aspects, mostly in Rubies, where a sense of playfulness appears, but as in most of Balanchine's works, it is stifled by the rigidness of his style.
Diamonds is just a honking big Russian classical finale. I remember thinking this was the one setting where Lacroix got his costumes right, because, duh, how many Russian white acts can be looked at for research? In this case, I actually preferred his costumes over Karinska's. While Emeralds had some spacing issues, Diamonds was flawed by timing issues. The dancers weren't getting any help from their conductor for the evening. Yes, it's set to a Tchaikovsky symphony, but no, you cannot conduct the orchestra to play it as if they are in concert. You have to be sensitive to the choreography, or at the very least aware that there are dancers on the stage. You have to be subtle with such an intricate and precise piece. I'm sure the score was marked accordingly. It would behoove the conductor to follow them, and work with the dancers. That is, after all, what a ballet pit orchestra is paid to do.
That being said, I have stuck a few toes in the murky waters of the maestro's works. I have plans to to do a bit more wading, as the season continues. Stay tuned.